The doomsday clock showed the approach of “nuclear midnight” by 10 seconds

Now the clock shows 90 seconds before "nuclear midnight" - the closest value to a catastrophe in the entire history of the project.Mainly the situation is influenced by hostilities in Ukraine

The hands on the symbolic Doomsday Clock, which first appeared on the cover of the US magazine Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947, have been moved ten seconds closer to "nuclear midnight."

This is the closest position to midnight that scientists have set "time" for the entire time the clock has existed. They are now displaying "unprecedented danger," the bulletin's website said in a statement.

The clock is set to 90 seconds to midnight, mainly due to the situation in Ukraine. According to scientists, Russia's actions in the neighboring country raise the fundamental question of "how states interact, destroying the norms of international behavior that underlie the successful fight against various global risks." The report says that Moscow's "veiled threats" to use nuclear weapons "remind the world that escalation of the conflict - whether by accident, design or miscalculation - is a terrible risk" and the likelihood of the conflict spiraling out of control is very high. . Among the episodes in Ukraine that moved the clock closer to midnight, experts identified military operations in the vicinity of the Chernobyl and Zaporozhye nuclear power plants.

Another factor related to Russia is the situation around the Strategic Offensive Arms Treaty (START III) between Moscow and Washington, which entered into force in 2011 and was extended for five years in 2021. It is the only Russian-American arms control treaty still in effect. Unless the parties resume negotiations and find a basis for further arms reductions, the report notes, the treaty will simply cease to exist in February 2026, when it expires. This "ends mutual inspections, increases distrust, spurs a nuclear arms race and increases the likelihood of a nuclear exchange," they warn.

The conflict in Ukraine is not the only reason to turn the clock towards midnight: the new time has also been affected by the lingering threats associated with the climate crisis, as well as the destruction of global norms and institutions needed to reduce the risks associated with the development of technology and biological threats such as COVID -19 .

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists President and CEO Rachel Bronson said the decision to move the shooters to this position was not an easy one. “We live in a time of unprecedented peril, and the Doomsday Clock reflects that reality. 90 seconds to midnight is the closest time to midnight the watch has ever been set to, and it was a hard decision for our experts to make. The US government , its NATO allies, and Ukraine have many channels for dialogue; we encourage leaders to use all of them to the fullest to turn back the clock,” she said.

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How time changed on the doomsday clock. Infographic Politics

Experts are also turning to the United States with a recommendation to “keep the door open for principled engagement with Moscow” in order to reduce the nuclear risks posed by the conflict in Ukraine. In this context, it is important, in particular, to maintain stable contacts between the United States and Russia at the level of top military leadership, the report notes.

The American journal Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists covers international security issues and threats posed by weapons of mass destruction (WMD). It was created in 1945 by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein and a group of scientists from the University of Chicago who were involved in the development of nuclear weapons as part of the Manhattan Project. In 1947, the Bulletin built the so-called Doomsday Clock, where midnight symbolizes the apocalypse, and the countdown to it symbolizes the degree of threat. The time on the clock is set annually by members of the Bulletin's Science and Safety Council in cooperation with the Council of Sponsors, which includes ten Nobel laureates.